Elizabeth J. Coatsworth (1893 - 1986)

Genre: Children's Literature

Coatsworth, born in Buffalo, NY, and a graduate of Vassar (BA 1915) and Columbia (MA 1916),
was the wife of Henry Beston (married 1929) and lived with him in Hingham, Mass.,
and then on a farm in Nobleboro for decades; she's buried in the cemetery on Chimney Farm.
Their daughter Kate Barnes was Maine's first poet laureate.
Coatsworth travelled widely, spending time in England, France, Spain,
Italy, Greece, Egypt, Morocco, Japan, China, Mexico, the Philippines, and
the Yucatan. She incorporates her travel memories into her writing.

Coatsworth wrote over 90 books, most of them children's books, including:

The Cat and the Captain (1927)

Toutou in Bondage (1929), the adventures of a fox terrier in Morocco

The Boy With the Parrot (1929), a story of Guatemala

Away Goes Sally (1934): Sally and her aunts and uncles make a journey to a
new home in Maine, in a little house on sled runners, pulled by oxen

Sword of the Wilderness (1936), tale of a Maine boy captured by Indians

Thief Island (1943): Dave Little and his two children live on a deserted island off the Maine coast. Lobstering, storms and even a friendly ghost enliven the tale.

The Little Haymakers (1949), the story of a boy and his pair of oxen

The Captain's Daughter (1950): Thomaston in the days when ships sailed from Maine to the Orient

The Enchanted: An Incredible Tale (1951): Magical fantasy.
The moving story of a young man's strange romance in the "Enchanted,"
an actual, magical place in the northern Maine woods. Novel of a young man
starting a wilderness farm, the encroaching forest, adjustment to marriage, etc.

Dollar for Luck (1951): An adventure in the summer of 1882 of a boy from the land trading places with a girl from the sea.

Silky: An Incredible Tale (1953): The second in her series of Incredible Tales, set in the haunting
countryside of Maine. When Cephas Hewes calls out in despair, a young stranger with
grace and silken beauty appears.

Door to the North, A Saga of 14th Century America (1952)

Giant Book of Cat Stories (1953)

Old Whirlwind: A Davy Crockett Story (1953/1964)

Mountain Bride (1954), modern version of old Abenaki Indian legend

The Last Fort, A Story of the French Voyageurs (1958)

The Peaceable Kingdom and Other Poems (1958)

The Nobel Doll (1961)

Bob Bodden and the Goodship Rover (1968): Homesick for the
Maine farm where he grew up, Captain Bob sets up a farm on his ship

The White Room: An Incredible Tale (1958): The real and the imagined become
indistinguishable. Novel set on a hilltop on the Maine coast. A woman
fights for control of herself her family from the loneliness
of the land and the strong will of her husband's sister.

The Sailing Hatrack (1972): Fictitious account of life on a store-boat off the coast of Maine

Marra's World (1975): Spellbinding adventure, set in the haunting landscape of a Maine island.
Raised by a harsh grandmother and an indifferent father, Marra comes to understand her world with the help of a seal mother.

Coatsworth won the 1931 Newbery Award for her children's book,
The Cat Who Went To Heaven (1930),which is set in Japan.

Her first novel, Here I Stay: A Maine Novel, was published in 1938.
Her Maine Memories: Vignettes of Life around Damariscotta (1944)
was the first of several autobiographical books, including Personal Geography:
Almost an Autobiography (1976). Maine Ways (1945) contains stories and
anecdotes of the Maine way of life. Books of poems include Country Poems (1942)
and Summer Green (1948).